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[26]
Then stood up Salome's son, Antipater, (who of all Archelaus's antagonists
was the shrewdest pleader,) and accused him in the following speech: That
Archelaus did in words contend for the kingdom, but that in deeds he had
long exercised royal authority, and so did but insult Caesar in desiring
to be now heard on that account, since he had not staid for his determination
about the succession, and since he had suborned certain persons, after
Herod's death, to move for putting the diadem upon his head; since he had
set himself down in the throne, and given answers as a king, and altered
the disposition of the army, and granted to some higher dignities; that
he had also complied in all things with the people in the requests they
had made to him as to their king, and had also dismissed those that had
been put into bonds by his father for most important reasons. Now, after
all this, he desires the shadow of that royal authority, whose substance
he had already seized to himself, and so hath made Caesar lord, not of
things, but of words. He also reproached him further, that his mourning
for his father was only pretended, while he put on a sad countenance in
the day time, but drank to great excess in the night; from which behavior,
he said, the late disturbance among the multitude came, while they had
an indignation thereat. And indeed the purport of his whole discourse was
to aggravate Archelaus's crime in slaying such a multitude about the temple,
which multitude came to the festival, but were barbarously slain in the
midst of their own sacrifices; and he said there was such a vast number
of dead bodies heaped together in the temple, as even a foreign war, that
should come upon them [suddenly], before it was denounced, could not have
heaped together. And he added, that it was the foresight his father had
of that his barbarity which made him never give him any hopes of the kingdom,
but when his mind was more infirm than his body, and he was not able to
reason soundly, and did not well know what was the character of that son,
whom in his second testament he made his successor; and this was done by
him at a time when he had no complaints to make of him whom he had named
before, when he was sound in body, and when his mind was free from all
passion. That, however, if any one should suppose Herod's judgment, when
he was sick, was superior to that at another time, yet had Archelaus forfeited
his kingdom by his own behavior, and those his actions, which were contrary
to the law, and to its disadvantage. Or what sort of a king will this man
be, when he hath obtained the government from Caesar, who hath slain so
many before he hath obtained it!
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